ATLANTA – Environmental advocates opposing a plan to dredge coastal Georgia shipping channels starting this month have won a court victory.
U.S. District Judge Stan Baker granted a preliminary injunction Thursday blocking the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from dredging activity in Brunswick Harbor that had been due to begin May 28.
In a lawsuit against the Corps filed on behalf of the group One Hundred Miles, the Southern Environmental Law Center argued dredging this time of year would harm endangered loggerhead sea turtles. The Corps historically has limited dredging to the winter months, when the turtles are not nesting.
In a brief filed last week, the Corps conceded that One Hundred Miles was likely to succeed in forcing the Corps to do more work to explain its reasons for wanting to change the dredging schedule.
“We are pleased that the court recognized what’s at stake here for Georgia’s protected loggerhead sea turtles,” said Catherine Ridley, coordinator for the St. Simons Island Sea Turtle Project and Vice President of Education and Communications at One Hundred Miles.
The Corps has said the plan is part of a more holistic effort to protect a larger number of endangered species in coastal waters, including the North Atlantic right whale that comes to the area for its calving season each year.
“The goal is to try to figure out how to do everything better for all the species,” Nicole Bonine, an environmental compliance sustainability and energy program manager for the Corps’ South Atlantic Division, said in March.
The Georgia coast is home to the oldest loggerhead sea turtle nesting project in the world, started in 1964 on Little Cumberland Island.